Paphitis is the second oldest of five brothers ... he attended the local comprehensive school in North London where he battled with dyslexia, but began his entrepreneurial activities by running his school tuckshop , at the age of 15.

Walcott attended The Downs School - a comprehensive secondary school run by West Berkshire Education Authority.

I've dragged myself out into Middle Class and I'm pulling that ladder up behind me.

Anyway, I was never working class. It's not about money it's about...I dunno. You can tell someone's middle class. I'm trying to make Bamnan understand that it's not about money. Maybe one day he'll get it.

Because I'd wager that a relatively high proportion of DiSers were privately educated, but if we're talking public schools in the properly exclusive, sons'n'daughters of gentry* sense then I doubt THAT many attended.

and also failed to note the 'middle-class' covers a HUGE swathe of the population, most of which are probably struggling to make ends meet let alone have the cash to send their kids to private schools.

I am quite right wing and middle class though. Someone at work recently accused me of being "born with a silver spoon in my mouth". I've never considered myself posh before. He's from Croydon though so anyone's posh compared to him.

Most people are self interested, it's very difficult as a human not to be. I think being right wing usually stems from coming from a very traditional background-not necessarily a selfish one. Plenty of countries full of people most DiSers would call right wing are also full of the most kindhearted people you could come across. On the other hand, plenty of staunch lefties I've met will rave all day about the need to listen to the world's poor, but will have little consideration for those standing right next to them.

Right wing values, as i see them, tend to revolve around conserving the privileges of a select few as opposed to genuinely wanting everyone to have a fair share of said commodities. That doesn't necessarily mean right wingers can't be decent people on an individual basis but my point about "self interest' was more in relation to the values they subscribe to.

Hard as it may seem to believe, I think the majority of right wingers really do seem to find the current system fair due to the notion of hardworking people gaining appropriate rewards. I've only ever met one right winger who genuinely believed that everybody should accept their hand in life and stick with it, an ideology far more connected with the far right than the bog standard right.

-yet the majority seem blind (whether willfully or not) to the social factors that might prevent the less well-off being able to "pull up their bootstraps", and this coupled with the unwavering belief that anyone in a position of wealth and privilege must automatically be there because they've earned their way at least qualifies the "crazy" and "stupid" parts of bam's assertion.

A lot of the less well off are therefore not less well off because of crushing lack of opportunity, but because of being lazy/dishonest/whatever. Had you been taught to mistrust large swathes of the population, how likely is it that you'd still be sitting on the internet talking about how terrible right wingers are? I doubt if I hadn't been so fortunate as to have been brought up in a socialist feminist household then I would still be as pro equality as I am now.

being poor is shit bam. the poor have no dignity, that stoic age of community spirit, where each would share amongst their neighbours lies decades behind us. all the poor have now is hand outs, dreams of winning the lottery, a shortened lifespan and crushing reality that things will only ever get a little bit better for them, if they're lucky.

if you're talking about the lack of dignity shown by the glitterati, those with more money than taste, then unfortunately, those are the people most of the poor folk aspire to be like.

in my parts, there are pretty much two types of schools: public and private. Public is state education and private is fee-paying (often religious but sometimes secular or non-denominational). Private is "aspirational" and (putatively) "better". Public is perennially underfunded, and increasingly seen as for people who can't afford to send their kids to private schools.

It's not quite as simple as that, because there's this newish thing called Independent Public Schools, which are state-funded, but principals have control over the budget.

The first schools in England tended to either run by churches or trade guilds and only open to people of the religion of the school or the children of those in that particular trade. Public schools were public in that anyone who could pass the entrance exams and pay the school fees could attend.

The idea of state schools and universal education didn't come until much, much later.

That although the majority of the population (the 95% who went to state school) use the terms Private and Public interchangeably, there is actually a difference between the two. In reality, the pool of people from which their pupils are drawn are broadly the same, and it's those people who seem to be the only ones who care that the distinction exists, and they get VERY upset if anyone conflagration the two.

I thought "public school" was a term used for the creme de la creme of privates, the really famous ones that only the offspring of high up MPs attended. If this isn't in fact the case, then my apologies. As a former pupil of the kind of rough fuck comprehensive in which pupils were feared by teachers, I can only make guesses as to the distinction.

To some comprehensive kids it was posh (we had 'houses', blazers, a latin school song, loadsa traditions, etc.), but to most public/private school kids it'd be pretty povvo.

Add to /that/ the thing about grammars being an England/Wales thing, Scotland having always had a separate education system.

Added to /that/, some grammars are fee-paying public/private schools.

Add to /that/, at the time I was in school, there was a move away from local authority funding to grant-maintained. No effect on entry, but offered a degree of autonomy to the head/school board. (Like an Aus IPS?). More recently specialist status and academy status have also been a thing.

Add to /that/, the whole Catholic school thing. And the donations that parents may or may not make in order to secure a position in none for their child.

For the record, I went to a state school. Scotland has private/ independent schools (which are feepaying) and state (free) schools. Scotland doesn't really make a distinction between grammars and comps in the state sector, although they have a pretty decent streaming system which seems to provide a good challenge for those with higher aptitudes, whilst not leaving behind those who need extra help at more basic levels. It's a good system, i think.

it's pretty much unfixable, so it should be smashed to bits, crushed underneath the steely fist of the just, to be rebuilt in the image of a new, fairer system, where all shall be given the same opportunities regardless of street, station, gender, creed, religion or whether their dad (or mum) is in the masons (whether free or full price), the clergy (of any denomination), a member of parliament or wealthy beyond actual merit.

Monty Panesar and John Sessions, and he only went there for a year I think.

There was a guy in the year above me who was apparently the best youth table tennis player in the UK and was tipped to play at pro/Olympics/whatever the peak of that sport is level, but he's not listed on the wiki page so I guess it never came to pass.